Using Cloud Functions

Task Creation

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NVIDIA Cloud Tasks (NVCT) runs GPU-backed batch jobs. A task runs to completion on a reserved GPU instance and optionally uploads results to a model registry location when it finishes.

Tasks can be created in one of two ways:

  1. Container image

    • Runs any container that executes a workload and exits.
    • The container receives GPU access and any secrets or environment variables you configure.
    • See Container-Based Task Creation.

  2. Helm chart

    • Orchestrates multi-container workloads using a Helm chart.
    • Suitable for complex jobs that require multiple coordinated services.
    • See Helm-Based Task Creation.

Differences from functions

Tasks and functions both run containers on GPU instances, but they serve different purposes:

  • Functions are long-running inference services that handle repeated invocation requests. They stay deployed until explicitly removed.
  • Tasks are one-shot batch jobs. A task starts, runs its workload, and exits. The lifecycle ends when the container exits or a timeout is reached.

Result handling

Result upload to a model registry is not supported on self-hosted NVCF in this release.

resultHandlingStrategy defaults to UPLOAD when it is omitted, not NONE. Because UPLOAD requires registry secrets and a resultsLocation, a task created without those is rejected with a missing-secrets error. On self-hosted, set resultHandlingStrategy to NONE so the task runs without registry upload.

Authentication

Task commands require their own API key separate from the function API key. Run nvcf-cli api-key generate after nvcf-cli init to mint both keys in one step. See CLI for details.